February 12, 2016 – It’s bad enough that buildings along Upper Wacker Drive do not shovel their snow fast enough for David Sudler. The 59-year-old New Eastside resident says that on Lower Wacker Drive, conditions are even worse.

Drains that are supposed to carry rain water away from Upper Wacker are plugged with debris, even asphalt from recent road surfacing. With nowhere else to go, it flows through expansion joints, gaps in streets and bridges intended to allow concrete and steel surfaces to expand with the temperature. Pipes overflow, freeze, and burst. Things rust and crumble.

(Above) Plugged drains on the New Eastside. (Left) A CDOT crew resurfacing East South Water Street. A worker is raking asphalt around a drain. Photos by David Sudler. “We’ve got 14 drains on this block. We have ten of them plugged,” said Sudler in January. “There’s not a single working drain at the west tower of the Hyatt. Everything from Stetson [Avenue] down to Michigan Avenue, not a single drain works on the south side of the street. They plugged every single one with asphalt.”

The neighborhood Sudler is concerned about stretches from Michigan Avenue east to Lake Michigan and from Wacker Drive south to Randolph Street. Some drains in this area, he says, have been plugged for at least 15 years. Water freezes and pops the concrete on the sidewalks. It runs down walls and stairs. On the stairs leading down to Lower Wacker from the south side of Upper Wacker, one of the steps was so loose it could easily be lifted off.

Sudler, who lives at Columbus Plaza on Wacker Drive, says he started looking around Lower Wacker to find drains that could not be seen from above because they were covered with snow and ice.

Recalled Sudler (right) in early February, “I went below with my tape measure to try and figure out how far away the drains were up there so that I didn’t have to dig a whole lot to find a drain, and I found fire standpipes that had fallen off the wall.”

Standpipes, to which firefighters attach hoses, were plugged with cigarette butts. He saw drains plugged with Orange Crush cans. As Sudler describes it, “It’s like a rat house.”

(Below) Freshly repaired standpipes below Lower Wacker Drive compared with a broken and dirty standpipe.

And there was ice. He could cut foot-thick blocks of ice off some drains.

Sudler measured and made maps and called 311 and was told city workers would clean it up. But there were as many as 50 spots that need attention – drains, catch basins, and pipe sections, requiring, estimates Sudler, 130 to 160 job orders, each order taking five to seven days for a total of two and a half years. Realizing it was too big a job for anyone, Sudler dropped it and one year went by.

Brief fame inspires new effort to clear drains, repair infrastructure

In January, after years of being fed up with, he claims, buildings in his neighborhood not shoveling snow off their sidewalks fast enough, Sudler started shoveling for them. Wanting to get the snow off the street but be economical with space, he stacked it like bricks in the median of Wacker Drive at the intersection of Columbus Drive.

In the Chicago media attention that followed, some people thought it was a snow fort. Some thought it was a shelter constructed by a homeless person. 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly’s office, however, thought it was a “structure” impeding the flow of traffic and pedestrians and they asked him to take it down.

When that did not happen, a city crew appeared and unceremoniously demolished the pile of snow.

(Above) Broken and plugged pipes on Lower Wacker.

That led to a conversation between Sudler and Charles Williams, Commissioner of the Department of Streets and Sanitation. And not just a conversation, but Williams, according to Sudler, driving around Lower Wacker with Sudler showing him plugged drains, rotten pipes coming down from Upper Wacker, and damage inflicted by freezing water that cannot be drained neatly because pipes are rotted or blocked.

And one minor note, Aqua is sinking

While Sudler, a union boilermaker by trade who welded valves on pipes that go into Daley Center, is not pleased with just about every commercial building in his neighborhood, he is especially concerned with Aqua, the 86-story skyscraper on North Columbus Drive and two blocks west of the 93-story Wanda Vista tower planned for Wacker Drive.

“Big hunks of stone are falling off the side of [Aqua] and it’s not killing anybody because it’s not falling in a place where anybody [is]. But the building knows about it because they’re cleaning it up.”

He says plywood has been installed near the base of Aqua to hide a crushed foundation.

“The tall building of the Aqua tower is dropping, it’s gone down an inch and a quarter. But the CVS, which has no tall building on top of it, but is still attached to the same foundation, is not going down,” says Sudler, referring to the pharmacy next door to Aqua. “If you go down and look underneath the CVS, the whole foundation of the CVS is being crushed and dragged down by the Aqua.”

(Above) Map of area. Hyatt Regency Chicago and Columbus Plaza are in upper left corner. Aqua is in lower-center frame. Wanda Vista is planned for space at upper right.

He has calculated the rate at which buildings in his neighborhood are sinking, one-eighth of an inch per year. Over the years, he says the Hyatt Regency Chicago on Wacker Drive has dropped five inches. At the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel Chicago, it’s not as bad.

Confident things are getting fixed

“Charles Williams, the commissioner, turned out to be a really neat guy,” says Sudler. “And I told him, I said, let’s hop in your car, I want to show you some things. And I took him down the ramp and I took him around the lower areas and I showed him all the rotten pipes, and he said, ‘I’m going to get you connected up to the guy that handles piping.’ And I said, well, we’ve got a lot more here.”

He also showed around Jim Joyce, a project administrator for CDOT, who confirmed that he did speak with Sudler, and Paul Webber, a foreman of CDOT plumbers.

The next morning, on January 28, says Sudler, four workers in two trucks came by to repair some of the pipes he had shown Joyce. That afternoon, they came back to repair the stairs with the loose steps. (Right) Stairs, with a loose step when photographed on January 26, on south side of Upper Wacker Drive, leading down to Lower Wacker Drive. (Photo by Steven Dahlman.)

Sudler says he believes things will get better now that he has an open channel of communication with the city. He says he has been a liaison between the two city departments making repairs. CDOT has agreed to handle everything above ground. Streets and Sanitation will handle drains and sewers.

Once-a-year haircut leads to misunderstandings

When Sudler had local media attention for the snow he piled onto Wacker Drive, he was still a couple weeks away from a haircut and shave he gets just once a year, on January 21, his birthday. He grows his hair and beard long, he says, to play Santa Claus over the holidays.

(Left) Sudler with his controversial pile of snow in the median of Wacker Drive on January 7.

“I do run into trouble sometimes in the fall, when my beard starts to gets longer and people start looking at me strangely. They start giving me $20 bills and $5 bills. And I say, ‘thank you, I will make sure it goes to the right place.’ I never give it back to them, even when I say, oh, I live right here [at Columbus Plaza] and they want it back.”

If the last name is familiar, it’s because his grandfather was Louis C. Sudler, opera singer, chairman emeritus of the parent body of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and founder, along with David’s great-uncle, of Sudler & Co., one of Chicago’s largest real estate firms.

David Sudler has been a Senior Vice President of a pharmaceutical company, served on the board of directors of Chicago’s Classical Symphony Orchestra, and built yachts. He does volunteer work, including gardening, for Chicago Fire Department. His wife is an interior designer.

His inspections of the city’s infrastructure, often requiring interaction with people who work for buildings in his neighborhood, can happen at any time of the day. 3 p.m., midnight, 5 a.m.

“Different people work different shifts and I’m out there for all of them and I love it.”